maypole

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English

An East Frisian maypole.

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

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Noun

maypole (plural maypoles)

  1. A pole, garlanded with streamers held by people who dance around it to celebrate May Day.
    How would you like the maypole decorated?
  2. (idiomatic) A very tall girl or young lady.
  3. (ornithology) A maypole-like structure of sticks placed about a sapling in the bowers of certain species of bowerbird.
    • 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 212:
      The male Golden Bowerbird is a beautiful bird that builds one of the greatest structures in the natural world, a maypole up to three metres tall constructed of sticks and festooned with decorative clusters of flowers and lichens.
  4. (euphemistic) A penis, especially a large one.
    • 1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: for G. Fenton  , →OCLC:
      and now, disengag'd from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ'd, it must have belong'd to a young giant.

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Verb

maypole (third-person singular simple present maypoles, present participle maypoling, simple past and past participle maypoled)

  1. To dance or spin in a circle around something.
    • 2010, Julie Clark, Asperger's in Pink, page 223:
      Kristina quieted a little, and maypoled around me.
    • 2011, Simon Brett, Cast in Order of Disappearance:
      The line jerked and maypoled itself around the rod.